Текст книги "Reap the Whirlwind"

Автор книги: David Mack

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

15

Commander BelHoQ was in search of perfection on the bridge of the Klingon battle cruiser Zin’za. As the first officer of one of its newest warships, he took pride in his job performance, and he expected nothing less than exemplary work from all those who served as members of his crew.

“Kreq,” he said as he passed the communications officer. “Tell spacedock to prepare for our departure.” Moving along to the weapons station, he slapped the shoulder of tactical officer Tonar. “Run a battle drill exactly thirty-one minutes after we go to warp,” he instructed the lieutenant. “Don’t announce it, just run it.” Tonar nodded his understanding. BelHoQ moved on to the next free station and opened a channel to the engineering deck. “Engineering, bridge,” he said. “Respond.”

Lieutenant Ohq, the chief engineer, replied over the comm, “What do you want, bridge?”

“What I want, Ohq, is full power and all systems ready for launch in ten minutes,” BelHoQ snapped. “And if I don’t get it, there won’t be a crawlspace on this ship deep enough or dark enough to keep me from feeding you to the captain’s targ.”

“The engines are ready for space, Commander,” Ohq said, his tone all bluster and bravado. “If you want to know where the delay is, try the cargo deck. Engineering out.”

Ohq cut the channel. The first officer permitted himself an admiring sneer for the chief engineer’s fearless attitude. Then he patched in an intraship channel to the cargo bay. “Cargo bay, bridge! What’s the holdup down there, you taHqeqpu’?”

His hail was met by a din of falling containers, shouting voices, and overtaxed machinery. The longer BelHoQ listened to the chaotic opera of ineptitude over the speaker, the angrier he became, and the harder the rest of the bridge crew laughed. The first officer’s rage finally exploded from him, too potent to be restrained. “Urgoz, you damned Qovpatlh! If I have to go belowdecks to get an answer from you, no one will ever find your body!”

After a few more thuds of tumbling cargo, Urgoz, the cargo chief, spoke over the comm, sounding winded and harried. “Sir.”

“What in Gre’thor is going on down there?” BelHoQ demanded.

A few huffs of breath preceded Urgoz’s reply. “Just a few problems, Commander. One of the new hands didn’t secure the stacks as ordered. It’s under—” He was interrupted by another clanging ruckus that quickly gave way to silence. As if nothing had happened, Urgoz finished, “It’s under control, sir.”

BelHoQ stifled the laughing bridge officers with a glare. “How long before you’re ready for space, Urgoz?”

“Twenty-five minutes,” Urgoz said.

“You’ve got ten,” BelHoQ said. “Don’t be late. Bridge out.” He cut the channel before he was forced to endure another one of Urgoz’s pathetic excuses or simpering apologies. Just as he finished making a note in his duty log to cut the cargo crew’s rations by a third for the next week as a punishment, Captain Kutal stepped onto the bridge. BelHoQ announced, “Captain on the bridge!”

All the officers and enlisted men snapped to attention and faced Kutal as he walked to his chair and sat down. “As you were,” he growled. Everyone except BelHoQ resumed preparations for spacedock departure. The first officer moved to stand at the captain’s left side.

“The knuckle-draggers in cargo are lagging again,” he said. “Ready for space in fifteen minutes, sir.”

Kutal grunted and glowered at the image of the spaceport on the main viewscreen. “The sooner the better,” he confided to BelHoQ. “Been here too long as it is.”

The Zin’za had been docked in orbit of Borzha II for more than a week, repairing the damage sustained on its last jaunt to the Jinoteur system. None of the crew, BelHoQ included, was eager to return to that star system. The captain did not seem to share the crew’s lack of enthusiasm. Ever since the mission to Palgrenax, he had behaved like a man driven by restless demons. “Start prelaunch systems check,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir,” BelHoQ replied, and he nodded to the others, who had turned and looked at him for confirmation. They went back to work, their focus now entirely on their duties. The XO asked the captain, “Do I get to know why we cut our repairs two days short?”

Kutal cast a wary glance around the bridge, then replied in a low rasp, “A Starfleet scout ship sent a distress call from Jinoteur. We’re to capture the ship for analysis and its crew for interrogation.” He jerked a thumb toward Tonar. “Tell him only when he needs to know. Tell the others only when the mission is done.”

“Understood, Captain.”

A deep buzzing sound and a green warning light on the tactical console drew fiery stares from BelHoQ and the captain. The first officer stalked quickly across the bridge to Tonar’s station. “Report,” he commanded.

“Sensor malfunction,” Tonar said. “Primary array offline, power spikes in the secondary array.” He looked back at BelHoQ. “If we leave port now, we’ll be flying blind, sir.”

BelHoQ heard the captain’s heavy footsteps approaching and felt their ominous vibrations through the deck. “Those systems were just repaired,” Kutal said. “What’s going on, BelHoQ?”

“Either Fek’lhr himself has defecated inside our sensor array,” BelHoQ replied, “or Chief Engineer Ohq just earned himself forty jabs with a painstik.”

Lieutenant Ohq had shoved aside a half-dozen mechanics to get at the damaged sensor array components. Word of the first officer’s impending arrival in main engineering—a rare occurrence that usually presaged tremendous suffering for the person whose mistake had inspired the visit—had been called down from the upper decks, by mechanics cowed like jeghpu’wI while the commander made his livid passage to the midships ladder.

I will not relay secondhand reports, Ohq vowed as he twisted at the waist and pulled himself deeper inside the smoking jumble of slagged machinery behind the bulkhead. When BelHoQ asks what happened, I’m going to have the answer.

Ohq had been worried that some intricate system failure would have to be tracked down, at the expense of great effort and much time. Instead, he beheld the nexus of the problem in the sensor array and deduced the cause of the malfunction immediately. He called back to the mechanics, “One of you toDSaHpu’ pass me a plasma cutter, now.” A few seconds later the tool was pressed into his hand, and he bent his wrist at an awkward angle to get at a safe place to cut free the component that had caused the cascade failure.

In less than a minute he decoupled it from the part of the spaceframe with which it had fused. As it dislodged and fell into his hand, he heard BelHoQ bellow in the corridor behind him, “What’s your excuse this time, Ohq?”

The chief engineer wriggled backward through the close-packed bundles of cable and protruding junction boxes. He landed on his feet, turned, and looked up at the grizzled black beard and wild mane of the first officer. “This,” Ohq said, handing the damaged part to BelHoQ.

BelHoQ turned the misshapen hunk of metal one way and then the other. He thrust it back at Ohq. “What do you call this?”

“Sabotage, sir.” He took back the half-melted glob. “We had a gravimetric flux compensator installed where a tachyon distortion filter should have been. They look identical on the outside except for the fact we color-code them and label them on every axis. Of course, someone could disguise one as the other pretty easily—until it breaks.” He pointed out a dark red streak where the part’s outer casing had split open. “That’s the kragnite shielding—which is used only in the gravimetric flux compensator.” He lobbed the device back to BelHoQ. “Somebody in the station’s supply depot switched parts on us.”

The first officer’s fist closed white-knuckle tight around the fragged component. He stormed away grumbling foul curses and slamming the side of his fist against the bulkhead as he went.

Someone’s about to get a painstik up the bIngDub, Ohq chuckled maliciously. And for once it isn’t me.

“Could it have been a mistake?” asked Captain Kutal. “Or an error by one of Ohq’s people? Kahless knows, his tool-pushers aren’t exactly the brightest in the fleet.”

BelHoQ slammed the ruined component down onto the captain’s desk. The impact rang like a bell. “This was no accident! Whoever did this should be found and put to death in public, as a warning to others.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Kutal said. “But a manhunt on the scale you’re proposing might take a day or more, and we don’t have the time. Tell Ohq to expedite the repairs. As soon as we have the secondary array working, we can ship out. He can finish fixing the primary array en route.”

Pacing in tight circles, BelHoQ scrunched his face with rage. “This sends a bad message to others, Captain. They will think we are weak, that we let crimes like this go unpunished. It will invite more of the same.”

“Doubtful,” Kutal said. “I suspect this will prove to be an isolated incident, intended to delay us from reaching the Starfleet ship. For all their noble talk, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Starfleet had a hand in this.”

The first officer was grinding his jaw slowly, and his hands had curled into trembling fists. “We must make an example of the scum who did this!”

“Absolutely,” Kutal said. “Flay them alive and quarter them. Set them on fire and put them out with a disruptor blast. You’ll do so with my thanks.” He rose from his chair and made certain that BelHoQ understood that his was to be the last word on the subject. “But not until after we get back. Until then, I want you focused on the mission and nothing else. Get back to the bridge, and keep a fire lit under Ohq until those sensors are working…. That is all. Dismissed.”

A low rumble of protest rolled around inside BelHoQ’s throat, but he nodded his understanding and marched out of Kutal’s quarters. As the door closed, Kutal abandoned his own façade of calm and seethed to imagine what kind of lowly petaQ would resort to sabotage. It made him sick with rage to think of the damage his unseen foes had wrought on his ship. He calmed himself by daydreaming that one of them was human; then he envisioned his hands around the human’s throat, squeezing and crushing until it all but turned to putty in his grip, and he kept on picturing that—until it finally, inevitably, brought a smile of murderous glee to his face. That’s more like it, he thought as he left his quarters and returned to the bridge.

Pennington leaned against Quinn for support, and the pilot was leaning on Pennington. Arranged like a pair of crooked book-ends, they waved their drunken salutations at the two women who had just dropped them off in front of their docking bay at the Lamneth Starport. The attractive young ladies sped away in their hovercar and ascended swiftly back into the flow of traffic.

“Nice girls,” Quinn said with only a hint of slurring.

Lolling his head to cast a cockeyed stare at the older man, Pennington said, “Maybe yours was. What was her name again?”

“Dunno,” Quinn said from beneath a furrowed brow. “What was your girl’s name?”

The journalist shook his head. “No idea.” After a moment, he added, “I think she took my wallet.”

“So did mine,” Quinn said. He looked at Pennington and let out the snort of a suppressed laugh.

Even though he was angry, Pennington was starting to laugh, too. “Brilliant!” he hollered. They stumbled apart. “Men with guns are still looking for us, we don’t have a job to get us off this rock, and now a couple of skanks have snicked our wallets!” Quinn laughed harder, which only annoyed Pennington more. “Don’t you care?”

Forcing out his reply between guffaws, Quinn said, “Not really.” A few hilarious gasps later he added, “Mine was empty.” He straightened and brushed his fingers through his tangled mess of bone-white hair. “Relax, will ya? It’ll be okay.”

Pennington asked, “How will it?”

“I don’t know,” Quinn said with a shrug. “It’s a mystery. You just have to roll with what comes. Most of the time, things get sorted out on their own.”

Eyeing the pilot’s disheveled state, Pennington quipped, “Well, that would certainly explain the paragon of wealth and success who stands before me now.”

Miming a chest wound with exaggerated gestures, Quinn weaved and stumbled comically. “A hit, a palpable hit! You wound me, newsboy!” He tripped deliberately over his own feet and sprawled onto his back in a man-sized X pose on the tarmac. As Pennington strolled over and stood beside him, Quinn waved him away with mock pride. “Just leave me here. Sun’ll be up soon.”

“Get up, you ridiculous sod,” Pennington said.

Quinn made a pillow of his folded hands. “Not until you admit you had fun tonight. Don’t deny it. I was there.”

Rolling his eyes, Pennington admitted, “Maybe a bit. Except for the getting shot at.”

“What, are you kidding? That was the best part!” Quinn flashed a devilish grin and extended his hand to him. “Help me up, will ya?”

He reached down and lifted Quinn to his feet. “I’m wiped out, mate,” he said. “Mind if we bag it for the night?”

“Not at all,” Quinn said, slapping the dust from his trousers as he walked toward the entrance to the docking bay. “Tomorrow’s another day, I reckon. We’ll get some shuteye, start fresh first thing in the—” He checked his chrono and finished his sentence. “—afternoon. Brunch and Bloody Marys on me.”

Despite himself, Pennington smiled. “You’re all right, mate,” he said. “For a pain in the ass.”

“I’m a work in progress,” Quinn said, unlocking the docking bay door. He let Pennington step past him, down the passage to the ship, and locked the portal behind them.

The mottled gray bulk of the tramp freighter Rocinante sat dark and quiet in the middle of an open-air landing pad. Beyond the vessel’s large warp nacelles, its wingtips stood upright in their landing configuration; its narrow wedge-shaped fuselage was connected to the spaceport by a web of umbilical lines providing power, local communications, water supply, waste removal, and fuel.

After several weeks of hopping from one system to another with Quinn, Pennington had in the past week been entrusted with the ship’s security codes. He could now lock and unlock the rear hatch, enabling him to come and go as he pleased while Quinn busied himself with the business of booking freight or passengers for each leg of their journey. With the slow precision of someone who had just mastered a code sequence—or someone who was just drunk enough to have trouble remembering it—he opened the ship’s aft hatch. It lowered with a sickly whine of poorly maintained hydraulics and thick downward plumes of ghostly white vapor.

Pennington plodded with leaden steps up the ramp and lurched like dead weight into his hammock. Several seconds later Quinn clomped up the metal ramp into the main compartment and sealed the aft hatch behind them. Several recent brushes with unsavory types had left Quinn on the defensive. Where he had once taken security for granted, he now considered it to be chief among his concerns.

Quinn sat on his hammock and pulled off his boots. The stench of his sweaty socks had made Pennington gag during their first shared journey. After nearly two months in the man’s company, Pennington still found the smell horrid, but he had developed enough resistance to it that his reaction was limited to wrinkling his nose and rolling over to face the bulkhead.

Just as he was prepared to be serenaded by the buzzsaw of Quinn’s postbinge snoring, the pilot muttered a low string of curses and plodded off to the cockpit.

Twisting back around, Pennington called out, “What is it?”

“Message light’s on,” Quinn said. “Might be a job.” Pennington listened to the sound of Quinn tapping buttons for a few seconds, then the grizzled pilot sighed. “Aw, crap.”

Pennington rolled out of his hammock and stumbled into the cockpit with Quinn. “What’s going on?”

“It’s from T’Prynn,” he said. “There’s a Starfleet ship down on Jinoteur IV, needs a new fuel pod before the Klingons get there—and she wants us to bring it to ’em.”

“Jinoteur?” The word jogged Pennington’s memory. “That’s where we jacked that Klingon probe for her, remember?”

“Yeah,” Quinn said. “I remember. I bet it ain’t a coincidence, either.” He punched up a second screen of data. “She already bought the fuel pod from a vendor here on Nejev. Wants us to pick it up and hightail it to the Sagittarius.” He stabbed at a control with his index finger and shut off the comm screen. “So much for making a profit on this run. Do me a favor, will ya? Go below and make as much room in the hold as you can. I’ll call the vendor and tell them we’re on our way.”

“Sure, mate, you got it,” Pennington said. He left the bridge in a hurry and made his way down to the hold, grinning the entire time. He wasn’t the least bit happy that a Starfleet ship was in trouble, but he was ecstatic that he would be the first and only reporter there to cover it.

It had been a few months since T’Prynn had duped him into filing a story about the destruction of the U.S.S. Bombay, one that had borne all the earmarks of truth but had turned out to be a complete fabrication. He still had not fully deduced her motives for embarrassing the Federation News Service and himself with that intricate charade, nor had he forgiven her. Having been disgraced in the eyes of his peers, Pennington had spent the months since then filing anonymous filler for various news services. Making matters worse, by filing many of his stories from Vanguard, he had unwittingly condemned them to the limbo of the Starfleet censor’s office.

Now he had exclusive access to what promised to be a truly compelling and eminently newsworthy event involving another Starfleet ship—and this time his reporting would be firsthand, as an eyewitness and participant. The sweetest detail of all, however, was that he had T’Prynn to thank for it.

Who says irony is dead? he mused as he set himself to work making room in the Rocinante’s hold—and daydreaming about the story that was about to resurrect his career.

16

“For that reason,” Captain Okagawa said via the secure channel, “we think the Klingons are preparing to eliminate the civilian colony on Gamma Tauri IV, as a precursor to assuming control over the entire planet. We’ve started evacuating our own people, but the colonists are another matter. My first concern was that we wouldn’t have enough room for all of them. Now it seems the bigger problem is persuading them to leave at all.”

Dr. Fisher stood flanked by Ambassador Jetanien and Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn in front of Commodore Reyes’s desk, listening to Okagawa’s report. Having only recently been brought into the loop regarding Operation Vanguard, Fisher chose to stay quiet for the time being. He turned a red data card over and over in his hand while the meeting continued.

Jetanien asked Okagawa, “Have the Klingons made any overt threat against your ship or your people on the planet?”

“No, Your Excellency,” Okagawa said. “But I’ve put my ship on yellow alert anyway. ‘Turn the other cheek’ doesn’t mean stand there and wait to get hit.”

Reyes nodded. “My sentiments exactly.”

“Captain,” T’Prynn said, “when did you detect the spike in energy readings on Gamma Tauri IV?”

“About three and a half hours ago.”

T’Prynn looked at Jetanien and then Reyes as she said, “The signals group down in the Vault detected unusually intense activity on the Shedai carrier-wave frequency around that time. They claim the signal originated in the Jinoteur system.”

“Then it would appear that the link between those two systems is more than merely circumstantial,” Jetanien said as he began pacing slowly in the middle of the office. Looking at Captain Okagawa on the monitor, he continued, “Do you have an estimate on when Klingon reinforcements will arrive?”

Okagawa shook his head. “Nothing definite. But considering how fast their colony ship moved in, I suspect their military can’t be far behind.”

“Getting back to the situation on the planet,” Reyes said, “how many civilians were killed at that aquifer dig?”

In the time it took Okagawa to look at his data slate for the answer, T’Prynn said, “Thirty-nine: nine engineers, twenty-eight workers, and two peace officers.”

A few short clicks prefaced Jetanien’s query. “Are we certain beyond a reasonable doubt that the Klingons aren’t responsible for the attack on the colonists?”

“That’s for Dr. Fisher to say,” Okagawa said. “We’ve sent all the forensic data we collected at the scene. As far as deciding what it all means—“

Reyes cut in, “Point taken, Captain.” Looking at Fisher, Reyes said, “We need your report on the double, Zeke, so consider it a rush job.”

Fisher quipped with a weary smirk, “Aren’t they all?”

“Captain,” Reyes said, “continue evacuating our people. I’ll have the Endeavour pick up the pace; they should be with you in less than twenty-one hours. That should be enough to make the Klingons think twice before taking a shot at you.”

A troubled look lingered on Okagawa’s face. “What about the colonists, sir? If a Klingon battle cruiser on their doorstep doesn’t convince them to leave, then what?”

“Then nothing,” Reyes said. His weathered face slackened with dour resignation. “If they won’t ask for help, there’s nothing we can do for them. Once you have our people aboard, pull back to safe distance and stay out of it.”

“That seems pretty harsh,” Fisher said, sounding more irate than he had intended. “Why not tell them the truth? That something really powerful is going to kill them if they don’t get out of there?”

In an arch tone that rankled Fisher, Jetanien replied, “And how do you propose we explain our wealth of knowledge about their predicament, Doctor? The colonists would no doubt ask us to cite previous encounters with these entities. They would inquire about the nature of these beings: Are they intelligent? What do they want? Can they be bargained with? In every case we would find ourselves unable to answer, lest we divulge the entirety of Operation Vanguard.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Fisher said. “Those colonists’ lives are in danger. They have a right to know.”

“Perhaps,” said T’Prynn. “Perhaps not. Warning the colonists would expose our operation and grant the Klingons an undue advantage.”

Suddenly, Fisher felt like the only sane person in the room. Indignant, he said to T’Prynn, “What advantage? The only reason the Klingons are on Gamma Tauri IV is because we are. They obviously know why we’re there.”

“Not necessarily,” T’Prynn said. “They know that we are searching for something, but they might not know what. I suspect they made discoveries on Palgrenax that were similar to our own. But you misunderstand me. I am not speaking of a scientific or even a military advantage but a political one.

“If we betray our knowledge of the entities the Tholians call ‘Shedai’ in order to save the colonists on Gamma Tauri IV, the Klingons will manufacture a public outcry about our ‘secret programs’ to undermine civilians’ trust in Starfleet and the Federation. Our ability to continue our investigation will be compromised, while the Klingons will be able to justify their own efforts as a reaction to our own.”

Fisher was fuming as he looked to Reyes. “Am I hearing this right, Commodore? We’d let eleven thousand people die on Gamma Tauri to make sure the Klingons don’t embarrass us?”

Reyes sighed. “It’s a bit more complicated than that, Doctor. You’ve seen the potential in the meta-genome—hell, you showed us how to unlock part of it.” He reclined regally in his chair. “Now, I could be wrong about this, but I’m pretty sure that whoever figures out the meta-genome first is gonna be holding all the cards in this game—and I’d rather not see them in the Klingons’ hand, especially when we’ve got damned near all our chips on the table.” He leaned forward and folded his hands in front of him on the desk. “So far we’ve been a little bit lucky, and we’ve bluffed our way out of a few tight spots—but if we show our cards early to save eleven thousand lives on Gamma Tauri, we might be throwing away eleven billion lives across the Federation by giving the game to the Klingons.” Softening his tone, he added, “I’m not a monster, Zeke. I don’t want to see those people come to harm. But I’ve had to get used to the fact that we’re playing for much higher stakes than we’ve ever played before. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but we could be talking about the survival of the Federation.”

Heavy silence fell over the room. Realizing that he was outnumbered by people just as stubborn as himself, Fisher grimaced and shook his head. “Rationalize it, explain it, justify it any way you like,” he said. “It still adds up to letting innocent people die so we can keep our damn secrets.”

A low rumbling sound percolated inside Jetanien’s broad chest. Then the Chelon ambassador said, “May I make a suggestion, Commodore?”

“Please,” Reyes said, sounding both weary and curious.

Jetanien grasped the lapels of his robe and said, “It is likely that the Shedai attacked the Starfleet survey personnel because they were armed and perceived as a threat. If so, it is possible that the unarmed civilian colonists will not be considered dangerous and will not be targeted by the Shedai. If Dr. Fisher’s forensic analysis concludes that the colonists were killed by Klingon action, I propose that we treat the incident as a matter between third parties and remain neutral. But if he concludes that the colonists have been targeted by the Shedai, I recommend we either coax or coerce the colonists to evacuate, while taking steps to preserve operational security.”

Reyes nodded. “Fair enough.” He looked at Fisher. “Sound okay to you, Doctor?”

“I still think it stinks,” Fisher said, glancing at the data card in his hand. “But I can live with it.”

“Then you’d better get to work,” Reyes said, “because your report’ll decide what we do next.”

Dr. M’Benga shivered slightly as he entered the chilly confines of the morgue. Located on the lowest level of Vanguard Hospital, the morgue was a place that M’Benga disliked visiting—not out of superstition but to avoid being reminded of those times when all his knowledge and all of Starfleet’s formidable medical science simply wasn’t enough, the times when death bested them.

Hunched over an angled viewer in front of the morgue’s main computer bank, Dr. Ezekiel Fisher looked lost in his work, staring with unblinking intensity into the greenish illumination of the device’s recessed screen. He didn’t seem to register the sound of M’Benga’s footsteps as the younger physician walked over to join him. Even after M’Benga was right next to him, Fisher continued staring into the viridian glow. A half-empty mug of coffee sat to Fisher’s right; a semi-congealed swirl of artificial dairy product coated its surface. Fisher reached across the console without looking up, grabbed a blue data card from a stack of cards, and inserted it into a slot.

Trying to interrupt without breaking Fisher’s chain of thought by speaking, M’Benga covered his closed mouth with his fist and made a few low, throat-clearing coughs.

Fisher peeked sideways at him. “I knew you were there, Jabilo,” he said. “No need to be coy.”

“My apologies, sir,” M’Benga said. “I can see you’re busy.”

Rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, Fisher sighed. “What brings you downstairs?”

“T’Prynn’s medical records,” M’Benga said.

The chief medical officer turned his back to the console and leaned against its edge. “I sent them over two days ago. Did you get them?”

“Yes, sir,” M’Benga said. “I reviewed them at length.”

Crossing his arms, Fisher said, “And?”

“They’re suspiciously perfect,” M’Benga said. “From her adolescence through the present, her records paint her as the picture of health.”

Fisher shrugged. “Vulcans take good care of themselves.”

“Yes, sir, I know. I interned on Vulcan. So I know from experience that they suffer illnesses, just like everyone else. But according to T’Prynn, she’s never been sick, and every injury she’s ever suffered has been duty-related.”

“You talked to her?” Fisher asked. “Did you have her come in for a physical and a history like I told you?”

M’Benga nodded. “Yes, I did. And I didn’t find anything wrong…at first.”

Suspicion creased Fisher’s wrinkled brow. “Meaning?”

“When I compared the history she gave me with the file you sent over, they matched—perfectly. I know Vulcans often display eidetic memories, but how many know their own medical files word for word?” He offered Fisher the data slate he was carrying. “So I compared the data from her physical with her history. They don’t line up.” Pointing out several items, he continued, “She says she suffered dozens of minor injuries during her years of service in security and intelligence, but look at the numbers on those fractures and deep-tissue scars. Those injuries were all inflicted at the same time—approximately fifty to fifty-five years ago, either before or while she was a cadet.”

Sounding confused and alarmed, Fisher mumbled, “She lied.”

“There’s more,” M’Benga said. “Over the last two days, I’ve spoken to six doctors who were CMOs at her previous assignments. Most don’t remember treating the kinds of injuries she reported, but three of them said they did treat her for symptoms similar to the ones that brought her into the ER six days ago. And they all found that their private records regarding T’Prynn had been…expunged.” Nodding at the data slate, he added, “Forgive the pun, sir, but her medical records have been doctored.”

Fisher pulled a hand slowly and firmly over his gray goatee. “Exposing a lie is one thing, Jabilo. Getting the truth is another.” He handed back the data slate. “Let me tell you what I found out from the brass at Starfleet Medical. Her files were sealed by someone at Starfleet Intelligence—someone with a much higher clearance than mine. The whitewashed version was the best I could do; if you really want to get her original medical file, you’ll have to talk to someone above my pay grade.”

“Someone like Commodore Reyes?”

A knowing smile pulled Fisher’s mouth wide. “If you think you can get him to sign the order, be my guest.”